


Shoe Gaze

by Annie Christ (SmokedSalmon)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Axel and Sora are mostly platonic, Don't get skeeved out, Hope, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 12:59:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4349732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmokedSalmon/pseuds/Annie%20Christ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxas dies in a freak accident at the height of his college career. Axel is left to cope and recover with help from Roxas' twin brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoe Gaze

**Author's Note:**

> For the absolutely wonderful and stellar Mik. Also, I cried about twenty times while writing this.

### I.

“Talent is the seal of tragedy. The abstract element that determines whether or not someone’s passing is exponentially devastating. It’s what makes the tide pull back, push forward and then finally flood the city in an unforgiving sweep that reaches those who’d never expected to be touched. We all possess talent, but there are men who shine with the intensity of a dying star, warming and cultivating the lives it touches...”

The parlor room of the Kingdom & Family’s funeral home was a dimly lit exposé of mid-90s velvet furniture. A dusty green fabric that mirrored Scarlett O’Hara’s drape gown adorned the lounge Axel had made his home that afternoon, and from there he listened. Eulogies were never perfect. Not solely because those who never knew the deceased usually gave them, but because the summarization of human life seemed like a disservice to another’s overall worth. The sense of incompleteness only escalated when the deceased was particularly young, and Roxas had been young.

“Full of life…” Axel pointedly rolled his wetted eyes, sucking on his right canine and fingering the end of his black cable-knit sweater. “A valuable addition to the university’s lacrosse team, Honors program and overall community. Roxas was a game changer…” And so on. The sort of recycled riffraff one would expect from a priest who’d only met Roxas under the context of him pressing his forehead against the confessional booth’s screen and breathing out sobs because _Axel had felt so right._ That had been kicker, most definitely, but obvious enough not to be surprising on much of a surface level.

From the first day Roxas stayed after practice to help Axel gather orange cones it’d been obvious, and what a cliché it had been; an upperclassman captain of an athletic team falling for an underclassman with heterosexual standards. It was as poignant and over done as Nicholas Sparks’ plot points, but Axel had long since realized those themes were prevalent for a reason. All humans shared common ground when putting their love on exhibition. It wasn’t so much cliché as it was a natural frequency of human emotions, and there were _a lot_ of humans. Universal relevancy had been misconstrued as senseless ideation.

“You’re not going in?” Sora, Roxas’ twin brother and highly resented best friend, appeared in the doorway with red-rimmed eyes. “Don’t you want to be there when they close the casket?”

He’d sputtered on the word ‘casket,’ and Axel pulled his gaze from Sora’s black loafers only to redirect them to the boy’s face that was hauntingly residual of Roxas’. Murky hate that sat on his guts like a pile of ashes collected along his organs and became a congealing paste his body couldn’t purge. Perfect Sora had finagled his way out of the worst of it again, and Roxas had lost everything at the expense of the idealized American teen. This came as no surprise to Axel, which burned a brand on his heart, searing flesh and setting the groundwork for even more scar tissue.

“He doesn’t look like Roxas.”

Which was true. No putty or makeup in the world could reconstruct Roxas’ Adonis features. His body had been mangled in the car crash, but his mother hadn’t had the nerve to give him a closed casket service. Everyone needed to say goodbye to her not-so-perfect boy, and she needed those last minutes to _hold_ him. Axel’s coping was elsewhere. Anytime he attempted to reconstruct happy memories of himself with Roxas the memories were interrupted by recollections of hypersexual moments, the scarce but revealing arguments and split seconds when he’d actually considered dumping him. He was ruining the memory of the single person he was certain he loved by compulsory thoughts of guilt.

“It doesn’t matter if it looks like Roxas,” Sora said, offended. “It’s Roxas. He gave up everything to love you. The least you can do is go in there and be with him.”

“You’ve always seen me as his catalyst.”

“I’m not going to argue with you again.”

Axel looked away and then shuddered. “I don’t want to say goodbye. Everyone else is so fucking ready, and I’m not. Why am I the only person who isn’t ready?”

Sora considered this, startled, and then cautiously took a seat beside Axel. He leaned over his knees and looked to the man who was concentrating so hard on the window his stare might’ve been able to crack the glass had he thought hard enough. Sora reached for his bicep, squeezed it and Axel considered tugging away.

“No one’s ready to say goodbye,” Sora said. He took a moment, sniffed and then reached up to swipe up his own tears, flicking them to the side. “But imagine if we were allowed to decide when to say goodbye. Do you think we’d ever get around to it?”

 

### II. 

It was only after the grass had started growing on his grave did Roxas’ conservative family begin including Axel in on family events. Whether or not this was insistence on Sora’s part, Axel wasn’t sure. But it was how he ended up standing on the family’s front porch during the annual Christmas party, surrounded entirely by picturesque homes and sleep snowflakes. Axel was blearily watching the neighbor’s gold lights blinking with whiskey in hand. He found them obtrusively industrial, and suddenly, his eyes squeezed shut from his migraine’s incessant ache.

“You’re going to get sick out here,” Sora said, sipping from his steaming mug of whiskey-spiked hot chocolate. His nose was red, and so were his eyes, but the first Christmas without a loved one did that to a person. “Mom said you should come inside, anyway. We’re about to eat. She has some things she wants to give you, anyway.”

“Do you think they would’ve come around to me like this if Roxas had lived?” Axel asked. “We would’ve spent Christmas here with them? Sat through awful mass side-by-side?”

Sora lowered his mug. “Mom would’ve first, and then after the first go at it, Dad would’ve bit the bullet. You know, she talked about it with me. It was never anything against you. It’s just not what someone in the 90s predominantly thought after giving birth to twin boys. You didn’t hold your sons and anticipate their future husbands. Not that it’s right, but…”

“Generational differences,” Axel muttered. “I get it.”

“Plus, we pretend we’re Catholic.”

That made him smile, and Sora pushed his bicep against Axel’s. They looked at one another for an extended period of time, the look sharp and then cut in two when Axel heard the screen door swing open with a bang.

“Why’re you two standing out here?” Sora’s Mom asked, oven mittens still on. “I’m not having the both of you come down with the flu on my watch, understand?”

Axel wondered if the invitations to familial gatherings were Roxas’ parents attempting to help him gain closure, or the other way around. Maybe they were meeting halfway, attempting to put the puzzle together throughout the duration of extensively painful photo album viewings and conversations about Roxas’ quirks that’d been universal for the both of them.

“I should’ve known he loved you from the start,” Sora said, flipping through the pages of one of Roxas’ school notebooks. Axel knew that scrawl. He still had the confessional letter from Roxas laminated. “He talked about you to Mom and Dad all the time, wore that purple hoodie of yours every night and there was never a lady-honey at school. It was you. It was always you. Mom asked me once, and I denied it with so much determination.”

“Were you trying to protect him?” Axel asked.

After Christmas dinner, the party downstairs had turned into an ocean of wine and tinkling Christmas music, and Sora and Axel had found themselves inside Roxas’ mostly untouched room. It was full of boxes from his vacated dorm room, and Axel knew that entire day of packing his things had been traumatizing not just for him but also the entire family.

“I was trying to protect myself,” Sora admitted and sat down on the bed with a small bounce. He shut the notebook and set it behind him. “Why are people so selfish? I was so selfish with Roxas. I don’t even know _why_ now. What was I trying to prove to myself?”

Axel leaned back against the wall. “I can’t imagine it’s easy being a twin.”

“Don’t make it sound so simple,” Sora murmured, and he clasped his hands between his knees. “It wasn’t that simple.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Axel said. “Maybe you’re pissed there isn’t a bigger answer outside of this. Trust me, I’m always trying to give this divine reason. I ask myself what minor, seemingly insignificant detail I could’ve changed to keep him from getting into that car. Every single day, and it’s always at the worst times. I could be pouring a bowl of Cheerios and suddenly I’m wondering why it’s that simple. Why do people die for no reason?”

“He was so happy,” Sora started, and Axel watched Sora’s jaw visibly tighten. His face sank into his hands, and Axel took a seat beside him. “ _He_ was the happy one.”

“Do you _really_ believe he was that happy?” Axel hadn't realized he needed that reassurance until then. 

“How couldn’t he have been?” Sora inhaled hard, his tremors reaching Axel’s thighs. Suddenly Sora’s voice was thick. “He had _you_.”

             

###  III.

The damning part of befriending a dead lover’s twin was not just the obvious strange undertones of denial, but also the torment of knowing said lover truly was an individual entirely incapable of replication. Sometimes, when Sora and Axel went out for lunch after classes, Axel noticed just how different the two had been, down to the entirely different ways they smiled, enunciated words and processed conversational rhythm. Roxas had carefully listened, but with an unconscious bored expression Axel had playfully picked on him for, while Sora was intense, obviously curious about every minute detail.

But then there were the moments when they were exactly the same. Sometimes, when the moment was spurred just right, Sora parted his lips and raised both eyebrows in that same fashion Roxas had when he was surprised. Those moments lulled along Axel’s brain.

“I had this dream about him,” Sora started before he took a sip of iced tea. “He was underwater, and there were these doves. Suddenly, he was looking around and then underneath his feet was stained glass. Kind of like what you see in churches. I woke up right then, but it was vivid. Too vivid for me. Those dreams are the worst.”

“I haven’t had any dreams about him since the funeral,” Axel admitted, almost sounding guilty. 

“They’re not very comforting. They’re haunting.”

“I’d give a lot to be haunted by him sometimes.” Axel swallowed the lump in his throat. “Every day is more distance between us. It's a growing bridge that’s going to be closed for the rest of my life. It’s almost been a year. I’m going to graduate. But then life still feels like it’s going to be perpetually this. I’m never going to leave last spring, and I don’t know how to stop waiting.”

“A year isn’t a very long time.”

“But somehow it feels like a decade.” Axel rubbed his forehead. His club sandwich had gone cold. “And then nothing at all. I’m still waiting to wake up from this fucking nightmare.”

“Maybe things will get better when we stop pretending there’s a resolution to this.”

Axel’s shoulders sagged.

Sora reached out for his hand. Axel didn’t pull away this time. Sora had tried to physically comfort him several times, but the morbidity of Sora looking so much like the corpse he’d only fleetingly peered at in the casket turned his flesh into worms. Not so much now, and that struck through Axel’s chest, because he realized he didn’t _want_ to move on as much as he claimed to. He didn’t want to believe that some of the wounds were sealing. If he all wasn’t raw and exposed nerves for salt to hit, then how was he supposed to remember the intensity of his love for Roxas?

Their fingers interwove and Axel finally squeezed Sora’s hand.

“I’m here,” Sora reassured him. “We’re friends now, right?”

They exchanged looks, and Axel quirked the corner of his mouth up into an attempted smile. He remembered having a conversation somewhat similar with Roxas once upon a time. They’d been seated in the locker room, having just divulged personal histories, when Roxas turned to Axel and asked if it meant they were officially friends.

“Of course we’re friends.”

           

_“We’re friends, right?”_

_"Yeah, totally. Best friends, even.”_

_“Just wondering because…"_

_“I don’t know where I’d be without you right now.”_

 

###  VI.

When death happens, time becomes an abstract concept. One moment you’re standing in a funeral home and the next day you’re seated on a porch swing, listening to The Kooks with your loved one’s sibling, coming to terms with the three hundred and sixty-five days that have passed. Time is no longer a numeric concept, but the epochs of pain that change and evolve like a steady virus. It never leaves you, but at some point, it can become dormant. Still inside, but no longer an infiltrator on daily life, a regular piece of your biology.

“Did you want to go to a movie tonight?” Sora asked.

Axel’s head was tilted back along the swing’s arm, and his sunglasses were masking the crying fit from earlier. Sora and he had visited Roxas’ tombstone, but hadn’t wanted that to be the focus of that day. Both he and Sora had agreed that, while Roxas had been underlying with his sentimentality, like a cave river, he wasn’t one to outwardly waller. They’d vowed not to lurch under the pressure of their disparity, and instead, mostly treat it like any other day.

“Maybe,” Axel murmured, and he grunted when Sora kicked his leg up onto his thighs. The spring breeze pushed them back and forth. Sora’s hanging toes that dragged along the wood helped, but they were lazing in time with nature’s wants and needs. “Did you see what time the movies start tonight? I can’t be out too late. Finals are coming up.”

“Don’t remind me,” Sora muttered, and Axel smiled when he heard the pout in his voice. “You still owe me those chemistry notes.”

“Didn’t Roxas keep his?”

“He almost _failed_.”

“Fair enough,” Axel chuckled and then pushed up his glasses. “Did I tell you what I’m finally giving your mom?”

“You get her tons of things,” Sora said.

“But this is actually _sentimental_.”

“Flowers and Thank You cards aren’t already sentimental?”

“Fine,” Axel muttered and pushed down his glasses. “I didn’t want to tell you anyway.”

“Wait a minute!” Sora snapped. “I don’t like secrets. You _have_ to tell.”

Axel reached into his pocket and extracted a black velvet box no wider than three inches. He tossed it at Sora who barely caught it with an annoyed yell, and then pressed it close to his heart.

He exhaled. “You’re giving my mother jewelry?”

“Not in the way that you’re thinking,” Axel grumbled. “That’d only be a little weird.”

“Only a little?” Sora laughed and then popped open the lid.

He paused, and Axel knew why. It was a man’s band. Nothing ornate or spectacular, but it was silver band nonetheless. Axel himself had worn one since the day of Roxas’ funeral, but that afternoon, his matching ring was absent. He’d reluctantly slid it off after seeing it while brushing his teeth, having come to the realization it was time to set some things aside, not just for himself, but for the sake of Roxas’ memory.

“We joked about getting married directly after graduation,” Axel explained. “I bought us matching rings when I had a chunk of extra scholarship money, because I knew it’d be the last time I’d have that kind of extra cash. I got them resized about a week before the accident and set them aside in my desk drawer. I forgot how small his fingers were until I opened it this morning. I’ve forgotten plenty of things, unfortunately.”

“An engagement ring, then?”

Axel swallowed. “I don’t know if that’s what you’d call them.”

The chains on the swing creaked as another gust of wind pushed them forward. Axel reached out for it, and Sora shut the lid with a sharp snap.

“She’s going to appreciate it.”

“Do you think he would’ve said yes?”

Sora looked at Axel, and he swept up a quick tear that even surprised him. “Yes.”

 

### V. 

The day Axel moved five hundred miles north; Sora was the last person to see him off. They stood facing one another outside of bustling security, both his and Roxas’ parents having already drifted to a gift shop after a tearful goodbye to their son and adopted son. In some ways, Axel had been the final thread to Roxas for them as much as Sora was the final thread to Roxas for him.

“Don’t let the money get to your head,” Sora started. “Use it to come home.”

“You’ve already claimed the next five years of my vacation time,” Axel said, suffocating the tightness in his chest by softly laughing. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” Sora lied.

Axel glanced at the overhead screens and realized the time. “I need to be getting through security.”

“Right,” Sora said and opened his arms for a hug. “We can’t have you missing your flight.”

Axel hugged Sora, his carryon seated at his feet. What he thought would be a quick goodbye morphed into a tight and extended embrace, his face buried into Sora’s crown as his lips twisted to the side and eyes narrowed in defiance. _There is no reason to cry anymore_ , he attempted to remind himself. _We’ve been through this a million times_.   

“I love you,” Sora said, and for the slightest second, Axel could’ve sworn he heard Roxas. It was something in the tenor; in the way it dragged off the back of Sora’s throat in a distinct manner he’d thought he’d forgotten over the past year and a half.

“I love you too.”

 

_“I love you, Axel.”_

_“I love you too, Roxas.”_  


End file.
